Ocelot catheter for the recanalization of lower extremity arterial chronic total occlusion

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a growing clinical condition affecting more than 10 million patients in the United States and it is responsible for more than 120,000 amputations annually. The presence of chronic total occlusions (CTO) increases the complexity of endovascular procedures and open surgery may often be the preferred approach. Despite the optimization of the CTO devices and technique, percutaneous CTO revascularization remains a challenging procedure even for experienced operators with important complication rates. The Ocelot(TM) system is a novel CTO device to use real-time optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging guidance for the recanalization of peripheral CTOs. We review the mechanism of the Ocelot system, the initial results from the multi-center Connect-II trial and two cases of Ocelot-assisted CTO recanalization.